Harry Dean Stanton was never much for the limelight. The actor made his mark in movie history as one of the medium’s premier character actors, adding depth, grit, humor and music around the screen’s margins. In his home state of Kentucky, Stanton’s star still shines bright.
As more than 100 film fans spread out on the lawn of Nicholasville’s Blue Grass Memorial Gardens on Friday night for a screening of “Cool Hand Luke” on a giant inflatable screen, general manager Kelly Boston tidied the area around Stanton’s gravesite.
The 1967 film kicked off the annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest, a tribute to the actor who grew up in West Irvine — about an hour outside of Lexington, in Estill County.
“A lot of people don't know who he is by his name until you share the movies that he was in, and then they know exactly who he is. It's a lot of movies in that time period. It's almost all of them,” Boston said with a laugh, careful to replace a bottle of Budweiser on the modest marker. “We’re very glad to have him out here.”
A quintessential “that guy” of American cinema, Stanton appeared in more than 200 films and TV shows over his six-decade career, working with iconic directors like Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese and John Carpenter. His biggest credits included roles in “Alien,” “Pretty In Pink,” “Wild At Heart,” “Repo Man,” “The Godfather, Part II” and many more.
The late film critic Roger Ebert once wrote of what he called “The Stanton-Walsh Rule,” which stated, “No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”
Stanton’s storied career is what inspired Lucy Jones and the Lexington Film League to start the festival 14 years ago. Jones said she was initially surprised to find out Stanton had Kentucky roots, like her.
“That really resonated with me as a young person, that I could connect to this person geographically, and that we had similar backstories,” she said.
After a stint in California, Jones moved back to Kentucky and got involved with the Lexington Film League, making it her mission to make sure Stanton’s name was one that would be remembered.
“Character actors are the folks that make the films, but they're the folks who are not heralded,” she said. “They're not the household names. So we felt that at least in Lexington, Kentucky, we wanted to make sure that Harry Dean Stanton was a household name.”
The sheer amount of roles Stanton played makes it hard for fans to pick any one favorite.
Natalie Cunningham, of Lexington, has been coming to the festival for years, slowly filling in gaps in Stanton’s filmography.
“Because of this festival, I've gotten to recognize just how amazing of a character actor he is [and] that he is in absolutely everything,” she said. “I'm sure I've seen a good portion of the catalog, but there's always something new that I haven't seen yet.”
One of Andrew Milward’s favorite parts of the festival is the relationship that develops between attendees and its eponymous star.
“In these screenings, when he comes on the screen you see people kind of smile. You hear people kind of laugh, or oftentimes they clap, and he just adds so much to a movie,” he said. “I think getting to see Harry Dean act is always just a pleasure.”
Josh Johnson, another Lexington film fan, estimates he’s seen more than 60 Stanton movies at screenings over the years. Though Stanton never won an Academy Award or got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Johnson said the festival stands as a testament to the actor’s legacy.
“It's like an ever-growing thing. It's like a living monument, if that makes sense, because more and more people come to it,” he said. “Every year there's like a new development.”
Since its inception, Harry Dean Stanton Fest has hosted screenings at the Lexington Public Library’s Farish Theatre and the Kentucky Theatre, alongside musical performances and appearances by Stanton’s friends and collaborators.
This year’s films included “Fool For Love,” “Rafferty & The Gold Dust Twins,” “UFOria” and “Mr. North."
Most of the festival’s special guests were repeat attendees: punk legend John Doe, who co-starred with Stanton in “Slam Dance”; rockabilly artist James Intveld; actress Sean Young, who met Stanton on the set of “Young Doctors In Love”; and fellow Kentucky filmmaker Allison Anders, the director of indie standouts “Gas, Food, Lodging” and “Border Radio.”
Anders, of Ashland, met Stanton on the set of Wim Wenders’ Palme D’Or winning “Paris, Texas,” one of the actor’s sole leading roles. On Saturday, Anders hosted the first ever table read of “Lost Highway” — a screenplay she wrote while attending film school in the 1980s, which she had intended to star Stanton.
“I wish he had been even more a part of my life. Like, I wish we had kept in touch more. But more importantly, I wish we had made a movie together,” Anders said. “[‘Lost Highway’] was for Harry and for John Doe, and so John Doe was here reading the Harry part, which I thought kind of almost made it like it came true.”
Anders said Stanton stood out as an actor because of how much of himself he brought into his performances, and the way his Kentucky roots shined through.
“He's always Harry, and that's the unique thing,” she said. “I think there's an authenticity. And, I have to say, it's being born in Kentucky. I just think that Kentuckians are always who they are.”
For Anders, Stanton was “a genuine artist.”
“He cared so much about the material. It was almost like torture, which is how filmmakers and screenwriters feel, too, but rarely are actors so tortured by wanting to understand the material and to bring that character to life,” she said. “He did the work, and he took it to bed with him at night. He was really, really living it, and not in some really dorky way like method or something. It was just really intuitive.”
Silas House, former poet laureate of Kentucky, said what made Stanton special was his sense of self and how he never lost it.
“I think he had a deep understanding of the working class and the rural,” said House, who took part in the table read at the festival. “I think that gets rubbed out of a lot of actors but, for him, as an audience member, he seems like he’s one of us.”
While Stanton didn’t have any children, his collaborators, friends and relatives still come every year to remember him. Jim Huggins, Stanton’s second cousin, was in attendance at Sunday’s finale screening of “Paris, Texas” at the Kentucky Theatre.
“When I come here and see everybody interacting — everybody who loves Harry — watching these films and just reminiscing about the acting he did and what a great actor he was, I mean, I love it,” he said.
Huggins said the festival is a fitting tribute to his relative, who was able to attend the festival before he passed away at the age of 91 in 2017. Stanton would have turned 100 on Tuesday.
“Harry, he was never one for pomp and circumstance. He never wanted to hang out with or be seen with so and so. He did his own thing,” Huggins said. “He avoided the crowds a lot, but this … he genuinely loved this idea. So, going into his 100th year, I know Harry's here in spirit because he would have loved this. He loved it from day one.”
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.
